XXXVI.

Whate'er might be his worthlessness or worth,
Poor fellow! he had many things to wound him,
Let's own, since it can do no harm on earth;

It was a trying moment that which found him
Standing alone beside his desolate hearth,

Where all his household gods lay shiver'd round him; No choice was left his feelings or his pride,

Save death or Doctors' Commons-so he died.

XXXVII.

Dying intestate, Juan was sole heir

To a chancery suit, and messuages, and lands, Which, with a long minority and care,

Promised to turn out well in proper hands: Inez became sole guardian, which was fair, And answer'd but to nature's just demands; An only son left with an only mother

Is brought up much more wisely than another.

XXXVIII.

Sagest of women, even of widows, she

Resolved that Juan should be quite a paragon, And worthy of the noblest pedigree

(His sire was of Castile, his dam from Arragon). Then for accomplishments of chivalry,

In case our lord the king should go to war again,
He learn'd the arts of riding, fencing, gunnery,
And how to scale a fortress-or a nunnery.

XXXIX.

But that which Donna Inez most desired,
And saw into herself each day before all
The learned tutors whom for him she hired,
Was, that his breeding should be strictly moral;
Much into all his studies she inquired,

And so they were submitted first to her all;
Arts, sciences, no branch was made a mystery
To Juan's eyes, except natural history.

XL.

The languages, especially the dead;

The sciences, and most of all th' abstruse;
The arts, at least all such as could be said

To be the most remote from common use,
In all these he was much and deeply read;
But not a page of any thing that's loose,
Or hints continuation of the species,
Was ever suffer'd, lest he should grow vicious.

XLI.

His classic studies made a little puzzle,
Because of filthy loves of gods and goddesses,
Who in the earlier ages raised a bustle,
But never put on pantaloons or boddices;
His reverend tutors had at times a tussle,

And for their Æneids, Iliads, and Odysseys, Were forced to make an odd sort of an apology, For Donna Inez dreaded the mythology.

XLII.

Ovid's a rake, as half his verses show him,
Anacreon's morals are a still worse sample,
Catullus scarcely has a decent poem,

I don't think Sappho's Ode a good example,

3

Although Longinus tells us there is no hymn

Where the sublime soars forth on wings more ample; But Virgil's songs are pure, except that horrid one Beginning with Formosum Pastor Corydon.

XLIII.

Lucretius' irreligion is too strong

For early stomachs, to prove wholesome food; I can't help thinking Juvenal was wrong, Although no doubt his real intent was good, For speaking out so plainly in his song,

So much indeed as to be downright rude; And then what proper person can be partial To all those nauseous épigrams of Martial?

XLIV.

Juan was taught from out the best edition,
Expurgated by learned men, who place,
Judiciously, from out the school-boy's vision,
The grosser parts'; but fearful to deface
Too much their modest bard by this omission,
And pitying sore his mutilated case,
They only add them all in an appendix, 4
Which saves, in fact, the trouble of an index;

VOL. II.

2

XLV.

For there we have them all «< at one fell swoop,"
Instead of being scatter'd through the pages;
They stand forth marshall'd in a handsome troop,
To meet th' ingenuous youth of future ages,
Till some less rigid editor shall stoop

To call them back into their separate cages,
Instead of standing staring altogether,
Like garden gods-and not so decent either.

XLVI.

The missal too, it was the family missal,
Was ornamented in a sort of way
Which ancient mass-books often are, and this all
Kinds of grotesques illumined; and how they,
Who saw those figures on the margin kiss all,

Could turn their optics to the text and pray
Is more than I know-but Don Juan's mother
Kept this herself, and gave her son another.

XLVII.

Sermons he read, and lectures he endured,
And homilies, and lives of all the saints;
To Jerome and to Chrysostom inured,

He did not take such studies for restraints;
But how faith is acquired, and then insured,
So well not one of the aforesaid paints
As Saint Augustine in his fine Confessions,
Which make the reader envy his transgressions.

XLVIII.

This, too, was a seal'd book to little Juan-
I can't but that his mamma was right,
If such an education was the true one:

say

She scarcely trusted him from out her sight; Her maids were old, and if she took a new one

You might be sure she was a perfect fright, She did this during even her husband's lifeI recommend as much to every wife.

XLIX.

Young Juan wax'd in goodliness and grace;
At six a charming child, and at eleven
With all the promise of as fine a face

As e'er to man's maturer growth was given;
He studied steadily, and grew apace,

And seem'd, at least, in the right road to heaven, For half his days were pass'd at church, the other Between his tutors, confessor, and mother.

L.

At six, I said, he was a charming child,
At twelve he was a fine but quiet boy;

Although in infancy a little wild,

They tamed him down amongst them; to destroy His natural spirit not in vain they toil'd,

At least it seem'd so; and his mother's joy

Was to declare how sage, and still, and steady,
Her young philosopher was grown already.